“Maybe this was a bad idea,” she whispered.
He struggled to subdue his hunger for her. “I think we need to get in and out as quickly as possible.”
That had to be the first time he had ever said something like that. Normally, he liked to take his time about things, drawing them out. He grinned to himself, wicked thoughts spiralling through his mind and lust fogging his senses. Gods, he wanted Elissa naked and bucking beneath him. He would make it last all night and she would be weeping, begging for release before he finally gave it to her.
She nodded and it took him a moment to clear his head enough to remember what they had been talking about. In and out. He grinned again, dirty thoughts crashing back into his head. He managed to shove them out before they got comfortable this time and pushed onto his feet. His head spun. What had she hit him with? Whatever spell it had been, he had deserved it. He blinked and gave the world a moment to stop dancing before his eyes. Elissa approached him and he held his hand up, warning her to give him a minute. He still hadn’t got his hunger in check. If she laid a hand on him, he would have her back in his arms and breathless again, or worse. He had no qualms about public sex or inclement weather. He would take her right on the drive.
“You okay?” she said in a voice laced with concern and he blew out his breath and nodded.
“Ready.” As he ever could be. What he was about to walk in on was going to tip him over the edge again, he knew it, but he had to go in there and get that ring.
He kept some distance between him and Elissa as they approached the manor. The door was open a crack. Evidently, incubi didn’t worry about intruders. Hell, they probably welcomed them to the party. Anyone who had come here had probably been lured by the sexual pheromones the gathered incubi were throwing off. Willing hosts for the males inside. He pushed the heavy wooden door open and stepped into the building, Elissa trailing behind him.
Payne stopped dead and Elissa bumped into his back.
He had thought that the erotic acts he witnessed on the stage of Vampirerotique were hard to handle. He had been mistaken.
The orgy happening right on the pale marble floor of the elegant vestibule of the mansion was the epitome of hard to handle.
He tried not to stare, and not only because the incubus in him was loving it and he had a sick urge to strip off, join in and reap the rewards. He didn’t want the sight of seven naked males tangled with what looked like at least twelve females seared onto his eyeballs.
Elissa gasped. One of the men looked at her, his blue and gold eyes shining brightly, his smile wicked. Elissa took a step towards him.
Payne realised he had overlooked something critical and it royally pissed him off. The males here could lure and control Elissa. Over his dead body.
Payne roared at the male and grabbed Elissa, pulling her into his arms and tucking her against his side. She still tried to get to the man, wriggling against Payne and elbowing him. Payne turned his snarl on her and her eyes darted to his. Shocked didn’t cover the horror in her eyes.
A dark-haired male approached from a corridor on Payne’s left, this one actually dressed, wearing a smart dark grey suit. “Can I help you?”
The male’s swirling eyes dropped to Payne’s arm around Elissa and he raised his eyebrows at Payne’s markings visible beyond the rolled up sleeves of his shirt.
“I want to see him.” Payne knew without a doubt that the man would know exactly who he was talking about.
The man nodded and waved his arm towards the corridor he had come from, a smile plastered on his face. Payne kept Elissa close to him and followed the male, his senses on high alert, tracking every other male in the room. If they looked at her, he would kill them all.
They walked down a long red and gold corridor. There were no paintings on the wall on his right but dark stains marked where some had hung in the past. The windows on Payne’s left revealed the lamp-lit gardens. Elissa trembled against him. Payne squeezed her shoulders and she lifted her eyes to his. He smiled, wanting to comfort her and reassure her that she was safe even when he wasn’t sure whether that word was applicable to either of them. What the hell had possessed him to agree to come to this place? The distance between him and the orgy was growing, but his dark sexual hungers weren’t lessening. They roared within him, fiercer than ever, driving him to take Elissa and teleport them somewhere private.
Or forget the private and the teleporting part, and just take her right here and right now, regardless of their company.
The male opened a door on his right and disappeared into a room. Payne struggled with his incubus hungers, trying to get a lid on them, and peered into the pale blue room. It looked much like a library or a study, with bookcases lining the walls. Some of them even had books, although they looked as though someone had tossed them onto the shelves, uncaring of how they landed. A large oil painting hung above the fireplace directly in front of Payne. The smoke from the fire must have damaged it over the ages, clouding the image depicted on the canvas. He couldn’t make out the landscape.